Ants are enough to make any Austin homeowner lose their mind. These critters fill a place in seconds, making the area unsightly, and contaminating your food. They may not be harmful, but they carry disease-causing organisms that can affect your living environment.
It might be challenging to exterminate them, but that doesn’t mean that you should suffer in silence. Call an Austin pest control professional immediately if you spot one, and they’ll handle the rest.
What Do Ants Eat?
Ants are omnivorous, meaning they’ll eat anything they find. Despite this, they have a particular diet: Dead or decaying protein sources and sugar. Sugar and protein sources vary from one ant species to the other:
- Argentine ants love meat- they obtain it from insects-mainly other ants- and spiders.
- Carpenter ants can eat pet food, sugary foods, or living insects.
- Odorous house ants eat sugary fruits, dead insects, and breadcrumbs at times.
- Leafcutter ants use leaves to grow fungus in their layers. The fungus releases enzymes that the pests consume.
- Fire ants consume dead insects, fruits, meats, etc.
They prefer these because they give them the strength to carry food sources that are twenty times their body weight. They also love honeydew, not just because it’s sweet but because it’s what they feed their larvae so they can grow strong and join the colony. You can hinder their development by calling effective ant control near your Austin home.
How House Ants Find Food: Scouting And Gathering
Ants are orderly creatures when finding food:
1. Ants communicate through pheromones. When worker ants leave their nest, they leave a trail of pheromones behind to help them find their way back.
2. Immediately an ant finds a food source, it’ll go back to the nest-reinforcing the first trail-for other ants to follow.
3. Other worker ants pick up on the chemical scent and follow it to where the food is.
4. They’ll then help each other carry the food to their nest for the queen ant and other reproductive ants to eat.
Professional ant control for homeowners can stop these buggers in their tracks.
What Happens If You Interrupt An Ant Trail?
If you interrupt an ant trail in an attempt at outdoor ant control, you’ll ruin the flow of transporting food since worker ants rely on it to find the food source. Please note that a scent trail is invisible to us humans. You can only notice it when ants go together in a line.
The ants can create a new path unless you practice ant control by removing them and wiping the surface with the scent with some soapy water. They work fast. Therefore, you should call ant control in Austin to handle the elimination process effectively.
The Key To Keeping Ants Out Of Your Austin Home For Good
It’s easy to get frustrated by the critters, but instead of giving up or taking extreme measures like moving out, involve professional ant control near you like Accurate Termite & Pest Control.
We’re a pest control agency in Austin, Texas, with over twenty years of experience in exterminating pests. We serve Austin residents and those in the neighboring areas.
Our friendly technicians thoroughly inspect your house. They then create a customized service plan to fit your situation. We use quality and modern products to get rid of the critters. We aim to take the shortest time possible and leave your home as neat and clean as we found it.
Finally, we stop by once in a while to ensure your beautiful Austin home stays ant-free. Recurring inspections help us ensure customer satisfaction. Call us today and take the first step toward ant control in your space.